Man convicted in 1975 massage parlor killing

A man already serving a life sentence in Mississippi was convicted Monday in the strangling death of a woman in downtown San Diego nearly 36 years ago.

It took a jury about a day to find Leon Johnson, 58, guilty of first-degree murder in the November 1975 death of Luz Borrayo, 26, who worked at a massage parlor.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Charles Rogers scheduled a hearing for Nov. 18, when Johnson will likely be sentenced to a prison term of seven years to life, which was the punishment for first-degree murder in 1975.

Johnson, a former Camp Pendleton Marine, is serving 25 years to life in connection with a 1982 conviction for killing a convenience store clerk in Meridian, Miss.

During the two-week trial, jurors were told that police responded to the Twilight Massage Parlor on Fifth Avenue the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1975.

A female worker there told a dispatcher that Borrayo had been beaten and knocked out by a patron. The worker then flagged down a motorcycle officer, who entered the business and determined that Borrayo was dead.

The worker told police that two black men had come into the parlor that evening, one of whom gave the name, “Leon.” The name had been entered into a receipt book.

The man identified as Leon went into a backroom with Borrayo, according to the testimony. At one point, she came out of the room and put money in a jukebox, causing the co-worker to believe Borrayo was going to “turn a trick” or have sex with the customer.

Borrayo’s body was found lying on the floor of the massage room. She was partially nude and her dress was tied around her neck.

Evidence was collected from the body, but DNA testing wasn’t available until many years later. The case went cold until 2003, when investigators reopened it and ran DNA information from the case through a nationwide database.

They got a hit on Johnson’s DNA profile.

Deputy District Attorney Andrea Freshwater told the jury that Johnson’s DNA was in the system because of his previous convictions. In November 1976, he raped a 21-year-old woman at a convenience store in Alabama. In December 1982, he robbed and sexually assaulted a 55-year-old woman in Mississippi. He hit her on the side of her head and strangled her.

The prosecutor said those two attacks shared several similarities with Borrayo’s killing. Based on that and other evidence in the case, she urged the jury to find Johnson guilty.

“Thirty-six years, three rapes, two murders, one verdict — the only just verdict,” Freshwater said in trial.

Deputy Public Defender Michael Garcia argued that the DNA might prove that Johnson visited the massage parlor but not that he committed premeditated murder. He acknowledged that his client had done terrible things but asked the jury not to decide this case based on Johnson’s past.